News

September 2024

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  KAUST Launches Four Pioneering Centers of Excellence to Address Key National and International Priorities

  1 min read · Sun, Sep 15 2024

  News Clip News

  KAUST has launched four pioneering Centers of Excellence to advance research and development in alignment with Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030, focusing on the critical areas of Health and Wellness, Renewable Energy, Sustainable Food Security, and Generative AI, thereby reinforcing the University’s role as a global leader in applied science and its commitment to delivering impactful solutions that drive national economic objectives.
• 

  KAUST Center of Excellence for Generative AI

  1 min read · Thu, Sep 12 2024

  News Clip News

  KAUST has established the Center of Excellence for Generative AI to position Saudi Arabia as a leader in this transformative technology, aligning with Vision 2030's goals for human capital development and economic diversification while focusing on research and applications that span health, sustainability, energy, and future economies, ultimately aiming to cultivate talent and foster innovative solutions tailored to the Kingdom’s needs.
• 

  KAUST Center of Excellence for Smart Health

  1 min read · Thu, Sep 12 2024

  News Clip News

  The KAUST Center of Excellence for Smart Health (KCSH), founded to address the evolving health needs of Saudi Arabia’s aging population, is pioneering smart-health technologies through interdisciplinary collaboration, focusing on areas like One Health, Healthy Aging, smart diagnostics, and bioinformatics, ultimately aiming to enhance healthcare outcomes and economic health in the Kingdom.

March 2024

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  Former CBRC PhD Student Ibrahim Alabdulmohsin Highlighted for AI Contributions on Saudi National TV

  1 min read · Wed, Mar 27 2024

  News

  artificial intelligence Computer science

  Former CBRC PhD student Dr. Ibrahim Alabdulmohsin, now a senior research scientist at Google DeepMind in Zurich, was featured by the Josoor Program on Saudi National TV. The program, meaning "Bridges" in Arabic, highlighted Dr. Alabdulmohsin's journey from his education at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, and Stanford University to his leadership roles at Aramco's Advanced Analytics team. After graduating from KAUST under the supervision of Prof. Xin Gao, he joined DeepMind in 2019, contributing to groundbreaking AI research. The 24-minute episode explores his career and contributions to the field. Dr. Alabdulmohsin's commitment to advancing AI underscores his pivotal role in shaping the future of technology.

February 2024

• 

  Shuffling the deck for privacy

  1 min read · Thu, Feb 15 2024

  News

  An integrated shuffler optimizes the privacy of personal genomic data used for machine learning.

November 2023

• 

  Prof. Xin Gao assumes the position of CEMSE CS Program Chair

  1 min read · Sun, Nov 26 2023

  News

  Computer science

  Prof. Xin Gao has assumed the role of CEMSE CS Program Chair, marking a significant development for our academic community.
• 

  Safeguarding the right to be forgotten

  1 min read · Sun, Nov 26 2023

  News

  healthcare privacy artificial intelligence

  An open-source software can help align artificial intelligence applications in healthcare with data privacy regulations.

October 2023

• 

  Lab-grown skin helps unlock secrets of mpox virus infection

  1 min read · Sun, Oct 22 2023

  News

  Skin organoids offer a powerful platform for drug discovery in the ongoing fight against the virus formerly known as monkeypox.

March 2023

• 

  Guidelines for Cellular Deconvolution in Spatial Transcriptomics

  1 min read · Thu, Mar 30 2023

  News

  A recent Nature paper titled "A comprehensive benchmarking with practical guidelines for cellular deconvolution of spatial transcriptomics" by Haoyang Li, Juexiao Zhou, Zhongxiao Li, Siyuan Chen, Xingyu Liao, Bin Zhang, Ruochi Zhang, Yu Wang, Shiwei Sun, and Prof. Xin Gao evaluates 18 existing cellular deconvolution methods used in spatial transcriptomics using 50 real-world and simulated datasets. To measure accuracy, robustness, and usefulness, the authors compare the approaches using various metrics, resolutions, spatial transcriptomics technologies, spot numbers, and gene numbers. The

February 2023

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  Alumni in focus: Abdullah AlGziwi

  1 min read · Sun, Feb 26 2023

  News

  Computer science

  Abdullah AlGziwi, a visiting student under Professor Xin Gao's supervision, was recently awarded the “Second Place Grand Award” at the Saudi National Olympiad for Scientific Creativity. He presented his research project on “A Novel exosome-encapsulated-miRNA-based machine learning model for multiple cancer prediction and prognosis”.

December 2022

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  KAUST Commencement 2022 looks to a bright future

  1 min read · Sun, Dec 18 2022

  News

  King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) celebrated its 13th Commencement on a cool, breezy evening, December 16, 2022, among approximately 380 graduating students and a full audience of supportive families, university community members and distinguished guests. This year CBRC saw many student candidates complete their Postdoctoral and Masters Degrees. CBRC congratulates all students on this great achievement and wishes you even more success in the future.
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  Gene detectives solve disease mysteries

  1 min read · Sun, Dec 18 2022

  News

  Prof. Arold and Gao presented their research at two high-profile conferences in Riyadh in November 2022; the International Conference on Genomic Medicine and the HIMSS22 Middle East Health Conference & Exhibition. Both researchers underline the importance of such events for discussions with clinicians, healthcare providers and policymakers to help connect their research with the healthcare needs of the country.

October 2022

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  Appointment of Prof. Xin Gao as Interim Director and Prof. Robert Hoehndorf as Interim Associate Director of CBRC

  1 min read · Mon, Oct 3 2022

  News

  The Computational Bioscience Research Center (CBRC) is pleased to announce that Professor Xin Gao has assumed the position of Interim Director and Professor Robert Hoehndorf as Interim Associate Director of the CBRC. Both professors assumed their roles on September 15, 2022.

September 2022

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  CBRC alumnus Dr. Tanvir Alam awarded "The Early Career Researcher Award" by HBKU

  1 min read · Sun, Sep 11 2022

  News

  CBRC's Alumni Dr. Tanvir Alam recently received The Early Career Researcher Award from Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU), Doha on its first annual Research Day on September 7, 2022. Research Day was an opportunity for HBKU to recognize and honor the accomplishments of faculty and scientists, early-career researchers, and students, with the presentation of research awards in different categories.

June 2022

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  KAUST alumnus named in Forbes' “30 Under 30 Asia list” – Class of 2022

  1 min read · Sun, Jun 12 2022

  News

  healthcare technologies machine learning bioinformatics

  KAUST alumnus Yu Li (Ph.D. '20) was recently named amongst the Forbes' "30 Under 30 Asia list" – Class of 2022. Forbes recognized the current assistant professor of computer science and engineering at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) for his work developing algorithms to solve problems in biology and health care.

May 2022

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  New database to "SpUR" on cancer research

  1 min read · Sun, May 29 2022

  News

  human health cancer Computer science

  Xin Gao's team developed an interactive web portal where cancer scientists can interrogate how RNA splicing in noncoding parts of genes fuels the growth of different types of tumors.
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  AI helps diagnose post-COVID lung problems

  1 min read · Sun, May 29 2022

  News

  human health Imaging machine learning Computer science

  A new AI diagnostic tool developed by KAUST scientists allows doctors to visualize lung damage caused by COVID-19 in more detail.

September 2021

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  Meet KAUST new student: Xiuying Chen

  1 min read · Wed, Sep 29 2021

  News

  Natural Language Processing

  Xiuying Chen is a computer science graduate who joined KAUST from Wuhan University, China. Chen believes that KAUST provides an excellent research environment to carry out scientific research.

July 2021

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  CBRC congratulates Aryam Alotaibi a SRSI student on winning the top paper Award

  1 min read · Mon, Jul 26 2021

  News

  machine learning model evaluation bioinformatics

  Aryam Alotaibi a SRSI student at CBRC wins the top paper Award titled "Computational method to predict drug-disease associations using machine learning and graph embedding."
• 

  Training an AI eye on the Moon

  1 min read · Mon, Jul 12 2021

  News

  machine learning algorithm modeling Computer science

  Machine learning accelerates the search for promising Moon sites for energy and mineral resources.

May 2021

• 

  Forging a career through interdisciplinarity

  1 min read · Tue, May 4 2021

  News

  The foundation of building a successful academic career is generally thought to be the pursuit of excellence through specialization. Of course, the cross-disciplinary quest has its important place, but it's often thought of primarily as the fruitful collaboration between specialized entities or experts in particular fields.

January 2021

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  Simulating evolution to understand a hidden switch

  1 min read · Sun, Jan 17 2021

  News

  genomics Computer science computation epigenetics

  Some organisms evolve an internal switch that can remain hidden for generations until stress flicks it on.
• 

  Xin Gao promoted to rank of professor

  1 min read · Thu, Jan 7 2021

  News

  Computer science machine learning bioinformatics

  Computational Bioscience Research Center (CBRC) would like to congratulate Xin Gao for being promoted to the rank of Professor, effective January 1, 2021. Prof. Gao joined KAUST in October 2010 and became a CBRC PI in January 2013. He has since then produced tremendous work in the areas of computational biology, bioinformatics, machine learning, and algorithms. Dr. Xin Gao is also the Acting Associate Director of the Computational Bioscience Research Center and the lead of the Structural and Functional Bioinformatics Group at KAUST. Prior to joining KAUST, he was a Lane Fellow at Lane Center

November 2020

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  Talented KAUST Ph.D. student aims to revolutionize healthcare with machine learning

  1 min read · Tue, Nov 10 2020

  News

  machine learning healthcare bioinformatics

  KAUST Ph.D. student, Yu Li, is a talented young computer scientist with an interest in developing novel computational methods and algorithms to solve and understand the principles behind the “bio-world.”

August 2020

• 

  Meet KAUST prospective student: Xiaopeng Xu

  1 min read · Wed, Aug 26 2020

  News

  Computational biology artificial intelligence

  Xiaopeng Xu is a computer science graduate who will join KAUST in the fall of 2020. Xu obtained a master’s degree in computer science from KAUST, and a bachelor’s degree in bioinformatics from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, respectively. He will join KAUST in the fall of 2020 as a Ph.D. candidate and a member of the KAUST Structural and Functional Bioinformatics group under the supervision of Professor Xin Gao.
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  Computers excel in chemistry class

  1 min read · Mon, Aug 24 2020

  News

  Computer science combustion machine learning

  Machine learning models can rapidly and accurately estimate key chemical parameters related to molecular reactivity.

July 2020

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  How AI helps improve COVID-19 testing

  1 min read · Tue, Jul 28 2020

  News

  COVID-19 artificial intelligence

  Following a call by President Tony Chan for KAUST PIs to contribute through their research capabilities to alleviate the COVID-19 pandemic, efforts coordinated by Donal Bradley, KAUST vice president for research, and Pierre Magistretti, KAUST dean of the Biological and Environmental Science and Engineering division, mobilized a group of faculty to form the Rapid Research Response Team (R3T).
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  KAUST Prospective Student: Siyuan Chen

  1 min read · Thu, Jul 2 2020

  News

  artificial intelligence IoT

  Siyuan Chen is a 22-year-old graduate who comes to KAUST from the School of Communication and Information Engineering, UESTC, China. Chen will join the University in the fall of 2020 as an M.S./Ph.D. candidate in the KAUST Structural and Functional Bioinformatics research group under the supervision of Professor Xin Gao.

June 2020

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  Meet KAUST prospective student: Juexiao Zhou

  1 min read · Mon, Jun 29 2020

  News

  protein function Medical imaging

  Juexiao Zhou is a 21-year-old graduate from Shenzhen, China, who will join KAUST in the fall of 2020 as an M.S./Ph.D. candidate and member of the KAUST Structural and Functional Bioinformatics research group under the supervision of Professor Xin Gao.
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  AI that's built to save lives

  1 min read · Tue, Jun 9 2020

  Spotlight News

  artificial intelligence COVID-19

  Associate Professor Xin Gao and his group have developed an artificial-intelligence (AI) based solution to help increase COVID-19 testing accuracy. Identifying cases of early stage infection has been particularly challenging for frontline clinicians. Gao's AI-based model, which aims to increase accuracy, has been put to immediate use at King Faisal Specialist Hospital (KFSH) in Riyadh.

April 2020

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  Using AI to understand the pathogenesis of COVID-19

  1 min read · Sun, Apr 12 2020

  News

  The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has revealed itself to the world as an unprecedented viral threat with a crippling power to disrupt society as we know it.
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  Unlocking coronavirus' secrets through cellphone data and social media

  1 min read · Sun, Apr 12 2020

  News

  Dr. Paula Moraga is part of a multidisciplinary KAUST research team that applies models to COVID-19. She has worked on projects examining malaria in Africa and leptospirosis in Brazil, and the models she develops rely on in-depth knowledge about each disease. "With malaria, for example, we know that it's transmitted by mosquitoes," said Moraga. "So, if some regions have a high density of mosquitoes, are close to bodies of water or have a lot of humidity, we know that we are going to probably see a high risk of this disease." Into the unknown In many places, malaria and leptospirosis

March 2020

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  CEMSE Division startups in focus: Peregrine Genomics

  1 min read · Tue, Mar 24 2020

  News

  precision medicine big data artificial intelligence

  The future has already arrived when it comes to the most exciting and promising field of modern medicine—precision medicine.
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  Approximating a kernel of truth

  1 min read · Tue, Mar 10 2020

  News

  artificial intelligence machine learning

  Machine learning tasks using very large data sets can be sped up significantly by estimating the kernel function that best describes the data.

January 2020

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  LD Motif Finder locates ancient hidden protein patterns

  1 min read · Mon, Jan 6 2020

  News

  artificial intelligence machine learning human health bioscience

  A machine learning method has identified highly elusive amino acid sequences involved in cell morphogenesis and adhesion and in diseases like cancer.

October 2019

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  AI reveals nature of RNA-protein interactions

  1 min read · Wed, Oct 30 2019

  News

  artificial intelligence Computer science

  A deep learning tool could help in structure-based drug discovery.

December 2018

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  Please see our publication page

  1 min read · Mon, Dec 10 2018

  News

  bioinformatics Computational biology

  The SFB group has been very productive in both bioinformatics/computational biology and artificial intelligence.

October 2018

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  Meshari Alazmi defends his Ph.D. thesis

  1 min read · Wed, Oct 24 2018

  News

  machine learning bioinformatics structural biology systems biology

  Meshari Alazmi, a Ph.D. candidate under the supervision of Associate Professor Xin Gao, defended his Ph.D. dissertation on October 24, 2018.
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  Alumni Feature: Majed Alzahrani

  1 min read · Sun, Oct 7 2018

  News Spotlight

  data science

  Working in one of the largest companies in the world is a dream come true for many. For Majed Alzahrani, a former Ph.D. student who worked under the supervision of Associate Professor Xin Gao, things couldn't be better. After graduating in 2017, he quickly joined Saudi Aramco as a data scientist in its Drilling Data Science unit.

August 2018

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  CBRC goes to ECCB 2018

  1 min read · Thu, Aug 9 2018

  News

  Computational biology Nanopore Sequencing cwDTW algorithm ontology phenotypes SmuDGE

  The European Conference on Computational Biology (ECCB) is one of the most important conferences in the field of bioinformatics and computational biology. Held in a different European city annually, this year's conference will take place in the historic city of Athens, Greece on September 8-12, 2018.

May 2018

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  Meshari Alazami defends his thesis proposal

  1 min read · Tue, May 22 2018

  News

  machine learning bioinformatics structural biology systems biology

  Meshari Alazami, a Ph.D. student under the supervision of Associate Professor Xin Gao, successfully defended his thesis proposal on May 22, 2018. His topic, "Towards Rational Design of Biosynthesis Pathways", was well received by committee members Associate Professor Xin Gao, Distinguished Professor Takashi Gojobori and Assistant Professor Robert Hoehndorf.
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  Exploring science's fourth paradigm

  1 min read · Mon, May 7 2018

  News

  computational and statistical interface big data

  The recent KAUST Research Conference: Computational and Statistical Interface to Big Data brought together leading computer science researchers and statistical experts to discuss the current state and future of data science. Held on campus from March 19 to 21, the conference covered such data science topics as succinct data representation and storage; big data visualization; parallel and distributed algorithms for inference and optimization; and analysis of large graphs and networks.

April 2018

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  Siqing Hou defends his Master’s thesis

  1 min read · Mon, Apr 23 2018

  News

  bioinformatics Computational biology machine learning

  Siqing Hou, a Master's student under the supervision of Associate Professor Xin Gao, successfully defended his thesis.
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  Alumni Feature: Abdullah Khamis

  1 min read · Wed, Apr 18 2018

  News

  bioinformatics machine learning

  Abdullah Khamis has had quite an impressive career so far. After graduating with a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from KAUST under the supervision of Professor Vladimir Bajic and Associate Professor Xin Gao, he now works as the Director of Data Science in the Center for Strategic Studies (CSS) of the Royal Court of Saudi Arabia.

August 2017

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  The awesome scope of big data

  1 min read · Sun, Aug 6 2017

  News

  big data artificial intelligence computational methods health protein structures biology

  Sifting through huge amounts of data may bring a better understanding of whale shark social structures, protein targets for drug therapies and disease-causing genes.
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  Combinatorial Drug Treatment

  1 min read · Thu, Aug 3 2017

  News

  Our work on a promoter- and enhancer-level regression analysis of combinatorial drug treatment accepted by Bioinformatics.

July 2017

• 

  Our work on developing deep learning method for binding affinity prediction accepted by Bioinformatics (Sequence2Vec)

  1 min read · Mon, Jul 24 2017

  News

  Deep learning

  Congratulates Ramzan, Hiro, and Yu on their work on developing a novel method that combines the strength of probabilistic graphical models, Hilbert space embedding, and deep learning to model binding affinity of transcription factors which was accepted by Bioinformatics.

June 2017

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  CBRC participates in NATDP 2017

  1 min read · Sat, Jun 17 2017

  News

  comparative genomics proteins

  ​​​​​Five research groups from CBRC participated in this year's National Academic Talent Development Program (NATDP) Symposium on April 20. The Knowledge Mining Lab presented their research on Microbial Knowledge-based Expolaration Systems as well as Novel Computational Methods that Facilitate Development of Cyanofactories for Free Fatty Acid Production.

May 2017

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  Sharing expert experimental knowledge to expedite design

  1 min read · Thu, May 25 2017

  News

  synthetic biology bioscience Computer science

  A repository of metabolic information provides a quick reference tool for designing useful synthetic biological systems.
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  Fourth PhD graduated from SFB Group

  1 min read · Wed, May 17 2017

  News

  genome phenotypes

  SFB Group graduated its fourth Ph.D. student - Dr. Majed Alzahrani!